FontLab 7.0.1 for Mac and Windows released!

I have some good news for the end of 2019 ☺️ If anyone wondered why I was
gone from TypeDrawers for a long time — this is pretty much the answer.
Together with my phenomenal team at Fontlab Ltd., we’ve been hard at work. It
was a long march! I’m pleased and excited to finally announce the release of
FontLab 7, a major upgrade of our flagship pro font editor for macOS and
Windows.

FontLab what? FontLab 7.

Based on the foundation of FontLab VI introduced in 2015, the new FontLab 7
focuses on stability, productivity and technical excellence. We’ve worked
hand-in-hand with type designers from around the world to incorporate
countless user requests; polish the interface; and iron out glitches. As with
the previous release, FontLab 7 also adds some unique magic that lets you work
easier and faster — whether you’re a pro font maker or just starting your type
design adventure.

Users of FontLab VI can upgrade for US $99 , those who bought FontLab
VI after August 1, 2019 can upgrade for free.

We are celebrating this release with a special 25% discount valid until
December 22, 2019:

new users can buy FontLab 7 for just $345

users of FontLab Studio 5 can upgrade for $149

Fontographer 5 users for $172

and users of TypeTool 3 for just $299!

Students and teachers can get FontLab 7 for $229 or for $89/year,
with
discounts for lab and group licenses.

Your license lets you run FontLab 7 on
macOS Sierra-Catalina, Windows 7-10, and even Linux with Wine.

Type design is about precision. Hold Cmd (Mac) or Ctrl (Windows) to activate precision dragging of
nodes and handles and make fine contour adjustments without having to zoom in. FontLab 7 brings numerous
enhancements to its unmatched vector editor, but if you prefer to draw in Affinity Designer or Sketch, you
can now paste or import PDF vector artwork. Pasting and import of Adobe Illustrator and SVG drawings is also
refined, and the redesigned Autotrace lets you turn bitmap images into smooth, beautiful vector contours.

Type design is about consistency. FontLab 7 lets you find and fix inconsistencies and problems that
are hard to spot. With new thickness measurement, it’s easy to make perfectly even diagonal stems or glyph
strokes that precisely follow the typographic contrast. FontLab’s unique built-in FontAudit quality checker
finds and automatically equalizes stems that are uneven within one glyph or across glyphs. New Audit Kerning
identifies and fixes kerning combinations that cause visual clashes.

Type design is about whitespace as much as about what’s drawn. Tapping the semicolon key lets you
quickly autospace a glyph as you draw or edit it. FontLab 7 slashes the time-consuming kerning process: a
built-in pair list sorted by priority; instant creation of kerning classes to kern some glyphs like other
glyphs; and the ability to create “both-sided” kerning classes.

Type design is about scope. FontLab 7 fully embraces variable OpenType fonts, with new CFF2 support,
intermediate glyph masters and conditional glyph substitution. Designing variable fonts and large font
families is now simpler, as you can view and edit multiple masters at the same time.

Type design is about reducing repetition and increasing interchange. FontLab 7 can run
multiple actions in a sequence, and lets you batch-rename glyphs and use different naming schemes. With the
refined import and export of UFO3 and .glyphs formats and the new JSON-based copy-paste, you can
effortlessly exchange font source projects with users of other apps. Designers of complex families can now
install Vassil Kateliev’s TypeRig, a mighty batch-oriented plugin that supercharges FontLab’s already
powerful handling of masters, metrics, guides and anchors.

FontLab 7 is an integrated type design and font-making solution.

You can draw
smooth, consistent glyphs; autotrace bitmaps; create overlaps; simplify paths;
equalize stems; and scale outlines while keeping stroke thickness. You can
draw in fractional or integer coordinates; see both numeric and visual
measurements; and find & fix contour imperfections. You can space and kern in
multi-line tabs or windows that feel like a text editor. You can create, open,
extend, test and export font families, variable OpenType fonts, color fonts
and web fonts for any Unicode writing system. And you can interchange with
other font editing apps, and collaborate with their users.

In FontLab 7, we’ve made it easier to discover and learn about all this built-in functionality: move the pointer over a user interface element in FontLab 7
and hold F1, and the new Quick Help system shows a longer explanation.

And the just-released FontLab 7.0.1 brings some 30 more improvements, based on feedback from those who switched to 7 right away. ☺️

There was 6. I mean, VI.

In 2015, Fontlab Ltd. published a “Public Preview” of the new Victoria-based
font editor. I decided to name it somewhat differently: with a Roman numeral.
After all, FontLab VI was going to be as different from FontLab Studio 5 as
Mac OS X was different from MacOS 9. Had I realized that the letters “VI”
stood not only at the beginning of “Victoria” but also of… “Vista”, I perhaps
would have been more of the difficulties that were still ahead. FontLab VI
included many novel concepts, but it also took over from the rich legacy of
our apps: Fontographer and FontLab Studio 5. It implemented some of the long-standing suggestions from our users.

FontLab VI Public Preview was “future-ready”: cross-platform at its core, rather than needing
a tedious “porting” process; able to draw all its rich user interface on
multiple high-density screens; supporting interpolation in a way that was
compatible with the, at the time, upcoming variable OpenType fonts; supporting
color, with SVG, bitmaps and plain outlines. Internally working with
fractional coordinates. Full of ideas that our team had been tinkering with
for several years by then. But above all, FontLab VI was filled with our
experience of working with type designers all over the world for some 20
years.

On the other hand, the Public Preview was very “not ready”: at times, it was a radical
departure from what people were used to. It was unstable, full of
functionality that worked “in name only”. For two years, people were
downloading FontLab VI Public Preview. Some were happy about the things that
worked, and the way they worked, but many got very frustrated and discouraged
with the things that didn’t work. Or about the way the things worked. We kept working.

In 2017, we finally shipped FontLab VI 6.0.0. In many aspects, this version
was very much like Mac OS X 10.0 — fresh, but immature. Hopeful,
but also disappointing. Or indeed, like Windows Vista — which was a great step
in the right direction, but was not quite yet the right follow-up to the
successful Windows XP. Up until then, the 30 Public Preview releases were
accompanied by about 100 book pages of “release notes” that detailed the
changes, improvements and fixes.

Since 2017, we published 18 updates to FontLab VI, and the release notes (for
which I was largely responsible) covered 250 book pages. Those updates
gradually changed the face of the app, from “experimental” to “usable”. But
FontLab VI still had its limitations.

And then, there is 7!

So in the first months of 2019, we decided to take another major step: rather
than publishing monthly builds that addressed small problems and made limited
changes, we took the time to re-engineer some major parts, based on the
feedback from our users. We took a bird’s eye look on the entire app, and
identified some major things that we needed to do. The two years since the 6.0
release taught us what type designers liked about the app, what they disliked
strongly, what it lacked. We also knew what we had wanted to put in there
originally, but were too busy with putting other things in there that also
needed to be put in there.

Now, this is done — we released FontLab 7 in December 2019. The release notes
are 100 more pages that explain the 150 fixes and 150 new features or improvements that went into FontLab 7 ☺️.

“If you want to make more fonts faster and better and if you want to stay
ahead of the competition, go with FontLab 7. My favorite parts of FontLab are
auto layers, glyph masters and FontAudit. Using these features, I was able to
create an average of 167 ornamental glyphs (in two weights) per day. By
automating much of the grunt work, I think I’m doing some of the best work of
my life.”

Vassil Kateliev (Karandash / The FontMaker), co-designer of the Bolyar font
family and developer of TypeRig, sums FontLab 7 up:

“I’ll put it simply:
FontLab 7 is superb! What’s not to love? The best vector engine for drawing
and manipulation I have seen in ages. Rock-steady interpolation engine that is
also compliant with variable OpenType fonts. Start with an excellent multi-
paradigm approach to type design — old-school outlines, element references,
components, auto-generated glyphs, or all of them combined. Sprinkle on top a
handful of nifty tricks to speed up your work like auto layers or auto
OpenType feature generation. Combine that with a super powerful Python based
API (that I actually use a lot). Let’s not forget multi-platform: a fact that
I consider very important. The new FontLab is an endless ocean of
opportunities — you get an app for every taste and workflow. FontLab 7 finally
feels really mature. Don’t take my word for it — obviously I am a devotee.
Just give it a try, and see for yourself!”

I have been using it since the day after the release (alternating it with 6) and after the early bugs experienced, I must say that 7.0.1.7276 looks pretty much stable now.

Also, I don’t mind to be "nitpicking" or annoying, but I honestly believe that if you’d take the time to make a nice PDF manual and/or offer a more intuitive/detailed documentation, Fontlab 7 would be licensed ten times than it is.I honestly find truly frustrating the lack of documentation. :-(It would be a great program for beginners as well, and they might be put-off by its apparent complexity (and its many possible ways to approach work).

Also, I don’t mind to be "nitpicking" or annoying, but I honestly believe that if you’d take the time to make a nice PDF manual and/or offer a more intuitive/detailed documentation, Fontlab 7 would be licensed ten times than it is.I honestly find truly frustrating the lack of documentation. :-(It would be a great program for beginners as well, and they might be put-off by its apparent complexity (and its many possible ways to approach work).

I wholeheartedly agree. In the last months or even 2 years, “taking the time” was tricky, since our core team has been pulling 12-16-hour work days, often 7 days a week. FontLab VI also changed very rapidly, which made the documenting effort tough.

These last two years, I did manage to write those 450 pages of release notes, and my colleagues Alex & Igor had done quite some work on the help. In FontLab 7, we also have the new Quick Help (F1).

Documentation is as equally important as the software itself. Unfortunately, with a new product, it wasn’t really possible to even hire an external writer, because he’d need to be trained first.

But with 7 out the door, we’ll finally have time to complete the documentation. And there are designers who have now gathered enough experience with the app that they will also be able to contribute bits, I think.

I wholeheartedly agree. In the last months or even 2 years, “taking the time” was tricky, since our core team has been pulling 12-16-hour work days, often 7 days a week. FontLab VI also changed very rapidly, which made the documenting effort tough.

[…]

But with 7 out the door, we’ll finally have time to complete the documentation. And there are designers who have now gathered enough experience with the app that they will also be able to contribute bits, I think.

So — stay tuned!

Thanks,Adam

Heck, if I was in a different situation (concentrating on the design of typefaces to sell right now) I would have already started gathering/learning/writing down bits of "how to" and tutorials. :-)

I’m curious: for me (Windows), it works as a toggle button: once I press F1, the tooltips start to show, and when I press it again, they stop showing. Was it supposed to work by holding down the key the whole time? (I wouldn't want it to).

- tap the key briefly to toggle (turn Quick Help on/off, switch to the tool)- hold the key to activate temporarily, release to go back where you were before

I often hold 2 for Eraser or J for Knife, click where I want to click while holding the key, then release the key. Almost feels like a modifier.

We’ve invented this approach for FontLab VI. I haven't seen any other app that would do it this way, but I think if you get used to it, you'll find it very comfortable.

Of course the temporary holding doesn't make practical sense for *all* the tools — but it may be useful even for things like G (Guides) if you want to measure something.

And holding T doesn't work for “temporarily activating” the Text tool, understandably, as there is no such thing. You switch to the Text tool by tapping T, you go back to the previous tool with Esc.

Trying this now. Seems quite useful, surely it is for measurement and the Knife tool. Having “F1" as a shortcut for toggling the Toolbar Window, however, makes a bit confusing when you have to understand about the hovering feature for the quick help hints, IMO.

It takes quite of a struggle to switch between Studio 5 and 6 or 7 (more or less like Jacob wrestling with the Angel! :-) ) but once you have defeated the learning curve you won’t get back to Studio 5, if not for specific features which might have still be to be fixed (Autohinting?).At any rate, Fontlab 6/7 is complex but extremely powerful. I have never used Glyphs but features similar to its ones have been added in a multiple-approach way (i.e. not with the immediacy of Glyphs, but in a way that allows for varied approaches to your workflow). You just have to decide how to use or activate them.

The more we do the "bug signaling" the more the application will become pretty much flawless, I think. :-)

@Claudio Piccinini My problem is getting work done. I beta tested FLVI and then I bought FLVI when first released and never got a usable file out of it. To me it is still beta. I just purchased FL7 but with my past experience with the slow FL6 development process, I have little faith that 7 will be workable for 2 years. I need to know that I can always go back and do work quickly in FL5. I am not giving up on FontLab 7 but I do need a safety net. Who knows how long it will be for a usable manual to be written.

@Claudio Piccinini My problem is getting work done. I beta tested FLVI and then I bought FLVI when first released and never got a usable file out of it. To me it is still beta. I just purchased FL7 but with my past experience with the slow FL6 development process, I have little faith that 7 will be workable for 2 years. I need to know that I can always go back and do work quickly in FL5. I am not giving up on FontLab 7 but I do need a safety net. Who knows how long it will be for a usable manual to be written.

I fully understand. Having landed on 6 when it already has had various updates I experienced a pair of serious bugs so I was equally disappointed. In a while, there were just minor flaws (e.g. the toolbar onstantly disappearing or the right panels occasionally hiding) but not serious bugs in terms of work flow and stability for the output, so I sticked with it to learn the new features hoping they would solve all of the problems.With 7 already at the first update, the application feels really stable, and I have not felt the need to switch back to Fontlab Studio 5.Clearly it was a sort of "boomerang choice" releasing 6 after many years and with so many problems, but I see they are working hard to improve 7 by the day, and so far I am working well in 7.0.1.7276 (just released).Above all, no crashes, which is very important.

I do experience occasional crashes when I try out features I didn't try before and do something goofy. These are difficult to nail down and report, as they are not that easily reproducible. But all in all, if VI was like Vista, 7 definitely feels like, well, 7! (But I hope next comes 10 and not 8 ).

FontLab 7 is essentially a newer version of VI; same codebase, and an evolution of the same app. Besides new features and improvements, it also has a lot of bug fixes. It seems much more stable to me, even after using it >40 hrs/week for months.